All, as a follow up to Rob’s report:
we had 17 riders on Alpine ride today. 13 of us started at 7-eleven, and we picked up Larry Tanzo, Matt Babb, Jeff and Darby at Moreno Ave. It was Darby’s birthday. At the start it was a bit chilly (Tony reported 43F in Escondido, Larry and I saw 47F descending down Pomerado).
Rick W. pushed the pace on 67 and opened up a sizeable gap. Steve K., John Moran and I chased him down eventually. On Lake Jennings climb Rick W. went solo again, this time Larry, Matt and I chasing him, with Guido not far behind.
We reversed the direction on Dehesa loop today – we climbed to Alpine via South Grade, descended down Dehesa and climbed up Harbison Canyon. Rick B. blew by us on South Grade like we were standing still. Matt and Larry were main animators on South Grade, with Larry, Darby, Jeff and I following behind. Once we regrouped, Rick W. (again!), Ernst, Darby and I got in a bit of a break on downhill Dehesa. We were eventually caught by Larry, Matt and Voris half way down Dehesa, and had some fun and aggressive rotations towards Harbison Cyn.
On Harbison climb Rick B. blew by us, again. He set 4 new KOMs today. We had some nice paceline pulls on Old Hwy 80 before stopping at Lakeside 7-eleven for some drinks.
Once we got to El Monte, 6 of us ventured to do a full route by going to El Capitan reservoir (Rick B., Guido, Larry, Tony, Rob and I). After some nicely rotating pace line we got to the lake. We spotted some osprey hunting around the lake. Because of the drought, the water was very low. It was quite warm now. We did some steady rotations on the way back, into the strong headwind – in Lakeside Larry and I continued west through Santee to 52 bike path (headwind, again!), while Rob, Rick B., Guido and Tony went up 67.

Really fun ride, with a few new ideas for ride modifications in the future. You should have come!